Cavriago statua lenin biography

A special trip to Cavriago, in the province of Reggio Emilia, to tell about the bust of Lenin and the times that were, in the most pro-Soviet of Western European lands.

Film adaptations of Giovannino Guareschi ’s books have given us the image of an Emilia somewhat stylized compared to the one that emerges from the texts, but nonetheless truthful: an Emilia divided between hard work in the countryside, Sundays at mass and faith in communism. The red Emilia, the region that more than any other in Italy has taken communism seriously, declined, however, of course, in its version with the flavor of lambrusco and gnocco fritto. A communism taken so seriously that in the end, for those who come to these lands and observe them with an analytical eye and without getting carried away, it is impossible to take it seriously. Little has changed from the postwar period to the present: the people of Emilia are still among the most hospitable and generous people in Europe, the spring evenings they spend between a polka and a mazurka in the dance halls at the edge of the fields are still alive, and the villages in the rural areas are the same as they were in Guareschi’s time, and have remained almost identical to how he described them. Clusters of one- or at most two-story houses, with the entrance on the edge of the main road, and where you find everything within a hundred meters: the newsstand, the mechanic, the grocery store, the tobacconist, the church, the party section.

Only the belief in communism is not the same as it once was. Ideology may still be alive in some people’s minds, but naiveté has given way to resignation. Emilia, too, has known administrators who professed to be communist and leftist but did everything but serve the interests of the peopl

Information

Altitude: 78 m.
Inhabitants: 9.884 (updated to December 31, 2022).
Post code: 42025.
Weekly market day: Wednesday.
Patron Saint: S. Giovanni (June 24).
Hamlets: Corte Tegge.

CONTACTS

0039 0522 373411 - Town Hall
Town Hall of Cavriago

How to get there

Cavriago

By car
Cavriago is 10 km south-sest of the Reggio Emilia Motorway exit. The Provincial Road running between Montecchio Emilia and Reggio Emilia (SP62) is easy to find and connects it with Cavriago as well.
It is possible to reach the town from Parma by using the National Road SS513, turning off for Montechiarugolo and then, arrived in the Province of Reggio Emilia, following road signs to Montecchio Emilia and Cavriago.

By train
TPER: Line route Reggio Emilia-Ciano d'Enza.

By bus
Bus No. 1 or Bus No. 94.

Location

Cavriago, a nearby appendix of Reggio Emilia (10 km), is a dynamic and modern productive centre which has undergone considerable economic and social development in recent years.

Reasons to visit

The charming Piazza Zanti, partly porticoed, to visit the Napoleonic Cemetery, the oldest of the four remaining in Italy, built in 1810. It has remained intact, a mysterious and fascinating place where it’s possible to rediscover the story of a number of important people of the Napoleonic era.

Entertainment

Today the centre of the town’s very intense cultural life is the “Multiplo” Cultural Centre, with theatre, film and opera, etc., and the Cremeria, a precious piece of industrial archaeology, now a centre for study, work and education.

Not to be missed

In Cavriago is a bust of Lenin, the only one in Italy, which is today a tourist attraction. The bronze statue of Lenin arrived in 1970 in Cavriago’s main square (which is still today referred to with the same pseudonym) as a present of the Soviet Socialist Republics Union made by the Russian embassy in Rome. It was made in 1922 by the Ukrainian workers of Lugansk and before reaching Val d’Enza

When walking through the northern Italian town of Cavriago, a series of familiar names catch your eye. Steps away from street signs commemorating anti-fascists Giacomo Matteotti and Antonio Gramsci — two recurring figures in the toponymy of Italian cities — there are also Tolstoy, Mayakovsky, Gorky and Pushkin. They mark a territory whose links to Russian literature are not immediately obvious to most visitors. But this seemingly unremarkable town — with a population of fewer than 10,000 in the heart of the Emilia-Romagna region, historically nicknamed “Emilia Rossa” (“Red Emilia”) for its high levels of support for the Communist Party — built bridges between the Soviet Union and Europe over the course of the 20th century.

It is in the town’s center, in Piazza Lenin, that this history is most prominently on display. This is where Italy’s — and, most likely, Western Europe’s — last public bust of the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka Lenin, still stands. The unusual monument was unveiled in 1970. Its roots, however, run much deeper — back to the days of the Russian Revolution, when the first link between Cavriago and the Soviet Union was established.

Cavriago, a nearby extension of Reggio Emilia, is a dynamic and modern productive town which has experienced considerable economic and social development in recent years.